


Vespertine

by Rori



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Purple Prose, a shitty gift for the greatest friend, probably?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 08:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19269181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rori/pseuds/Rori
Summary: You promised him, long ago.'When this wickedness consumes me, Grimmjow – nothing will save this world', he had whispered to you, his eyes a predator’s gold; your hunger had been enough to swallow countless beasts, but his?His would swallow the world.





	Vespertine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [o_sables](https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_sables/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHANE :3
> 
> As always, reviews and kudos are much appreciated!

 

 

_._

_I’ll endure the exile,_

The light tinging of chains is no more than a whisper, a half-illusion – in this barren land, amongst endless sands that are more ashes than dust, your hearing sometimes gets confused. Did you dream that up, too, as you did the monster they’ve never sent(enced) you to free?

His last words are an immortal mark on your soul; _I’ll endure the exile –_

‘Tch,’ that was such an _Ichigo_ thing to say.

What did he not endure, you wonder – his soul must be old, now.

You whisper to yourself and the sands, ‘how long has it been, eh, Kurosaki?’

The slow ringing of chains is a faraway mirage, nothing more than an illusion and you won’t give in to the chase; you know this land better than your own endless, immortal heart; you know its games and all its tricks – it’ll lead you exactly where you don’t want to go.

Polar opposites may work well together, but not here. Never here, and you exhale a blue breath of pure reiatsu as you wander the endless landscape of that chaotic world which gave birth to you.

That old soul of yours certainly did reach an age you’d never expected it to. The first millennia had been a significant milestone or, so they said. The other three hundred? Not so much.

You had stopped counting years a long time ago.

‘Damn, I sure hope we gettin’ closer… I ain’t gonna run in circles in this fuckin’ desert for another month,’ the guard threw a sideway look at you, at your honed claws that shone through the (un)darkness of Hueco Mundo.

Captain-Commander Kuchiki had assigned you a team. She had called it ‘an escort’, her smug smile not quite reaching her eyes. You were there when they put another one of those white cloaks on her scrawny shoulders, a crown of glistening ice encircling her head – that day, Kuchiki Rukia became the closest thing the Shinigami have to a king. She knew better than to call herself a goddess, even though that sickening sweet smile of hers reminded you of an older foe who did.

You wonder if it was always going to end like this, when they made you the key to what they artfully never called a prison; ‘rather, a chamber,’ that old pest of a scientist had said.

‘Walk,’ the same guard ordered you, pushing you forward hesitantly. 

You promised him, long ago.

_When this wickedness consumes me, Grimmjow – nothing will save this world_ , he had whispered to you, his eyes a predator’s gold; your hunger had been enough to swallow countless beasts, but his? His would swallow the world.

‘Come on,’ one of the women told you, walking by your side as if you were old or sick; you might be both, or neither – they don’t let you see that moon often, the sun much less.

_I’ll endure the exile, Grimmjow._

The ones who didn’t forget about him endured his absence, too; only that elusive sound of ringing chains remained, catching you unaware, leaving you unsure. Could Kurosaki outgrow a dimensional prison and whisper sweet temptations through the bars of his gilded cage?

Urahara had say he was neither dead or alive – that the comatose state they’d put him in would restrain his powers enough to give them the time they desperately needed to save him. Ichigo Kurosaki laid sealed in the only desertic place they knew of.

‘Alright, I think we got the right place...’

The old ruins of Las Noches lay white and blue amidst the sands, half swallowed; the sky looks right back at you as you walk through its pieces in reverent silence. You could close your eyes and still find yourself wandering up to the tombstone marking the entrance, notching another claw mark on its rugged surface. Once, it read: ‘the price for getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted’. The words are long gone, and so should you be; Kuchiki and her kingdom of dead souls just won’t let your chaotic existence ends, and with it, the key to Ichigo’s tomb.

Once every – is it a decade? It sure doesn’t feel that long – but it can’t be more than a century. They take you there, to check if the seal remains unbroken and the boy undisturbed.

No one dare venture deep underneath the sand and bone dust littering the surface of Hueco Mundo, aside from you and your small escort of useless cattle. They will dutifully wait for you, a little higher in the stairs than the previous visit; whatever they could do to contain him wouldn’t work forever.

You wonder why they’ve kept you alive for this long; his family is long gone, and there’s only a handful of people remembering his sorry ass. No one would oppose it : his prison could become a permanent feature (isn’t it already?). His name is all that you’ve left – his face, too, is long gone.

The color of his eyes remain, its vivid gold still haunting your memories.

‘We will wait for you here,’ said the leader. ‘Be quick, Jaggerjack.’

Your eyes bore into his, and for an elusive second you saw your own reflection in the pitch black of his blown pupils, the blues of your eyes shining brighter, _wilder_ –

‘See ya,’ you whispered back at them, wondering what their hollow souls would taste like.

Each step echoes deep inside the empty corridors; the blue flame of your reiatsu casts moving shadows on the walls as you go deeper into this forgotten kingdom. The world is a darker place without him, or so they said when he left; you can’t help but feel Ichigo is exactly where he was supposed to be. He liked the change of scenery, even in death; he wasn’t peacefully sleeping where you left him last time, half-buried in a bed of white sheets, his own black sword forever piercing his heart, nullifying restless powers that kept growing long after Aizen was defeated.

_A Piercer of Heaven._

Now, Ichigo sits upon the bone throne of a smaller room, regal, his long hair more crimson than orange; he had looked human, at first. Slightly pale, but who wouldn’t, in this death-like state? The horns and claws had come later, along with the red fur lining his throat and wrists and the dark lines embedded in his skin.

His eyes are half-opened, reiatsu shining gold and black through his dead irises; his lips are curled in an easy smile, almost welcoming. His right arm is laying on the bone armchair, his palm open, the long claws immobile; a hell butterfly is resting on top of one, its wings slowly opening and closing in the heavy silence.

‘Yo, Kurosaki. Been a while,’ you hear yourself say to the dead man, walking the stairs leading to his throne. You cut your palm open on the blade, closing your fingers against its lukewarm metal; Ichigo is still immobile, silent – Tears are pooling against his lashes, falling slowly but never quite reaching the smooth floor. _I’ll endure the exile_ , he had insisted, fierce, foolish and braver than the whole world; _I’ll_ endure _the exile, Grimmjow._

Your grip tightens on the black bade; you can feel it hungrily tasting your blood, waking up wanting and hungry – _you won’t fucking endure no more_ , you think as you slowly pull out Tensa Zangetsu out of Ichigo’s chest, hearing the bones crack on its way out and seeing the flickering flame of his soul amidst flesh and bone. It clatters on the stairs, scarlet against white for an elusive second before you are blinded by _him_.

You blink black reaitsu away, but the room stays dark and you remain blind for what feels like another century, another year maybe; and then, you hear it – the slow, prophetic tingling of that chain, and the sound of air filling a dead body.

Ichigo slowly took a hollow breath, the air fluttering inside his ribcage, bones and flesh circling once again the small flame that was his soul; you watched it unfold, frankly unimpressed by all the theatrics of his rebirth.

‘I have become Death,’ he solemnly whispered, that vespertine god of golden eyes and black reiatsu, ‘destroyer of worlds.’

_I’ll endure_ , he had said to you long ago with one last kiss on your lips, _until you can’t._

**Author's Note:**

> The sentence "the price to get what you want, is getting what you once wanted" is from a fanfic summary I saw on ff.net; I couldn't find it again, sadly ;-;


End file.
